Trash folder is visually unreadable due to strike-through. Request an option to remove that / change that font.
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I think it’s a good idea to give a visual hint in this case – it helps users to see that they’re looking at an item in the trash. The inspector shows all relevant information, also for items in the trash.
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True, but it should not avoid the people being even able to read the trash. Like I’ve often a duplicate detection running. Moves duplicates to the trash. Now I’d like to have a final review before emptying the trash. That’s completely impossible as I can’t read anything there. So I’ve to move everything out of the trash, into some temp folder, read it, then back.
That’s why I was asking for an “option.” Other people then can just not use it. It’s just a font option, so does not seem hard.
Seems fully readable to me.
Perhaps increase the font size (which you can already do)?
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Accessibility affordances aren’t for those who don’t want or need them – but can make a huge difference for those who do.
We can already “Mark duplicates and replicants in color”, adding Trashed files might be straightforward?
As an alternative to strikethrough format, underline might work? (I’d prefer the colour option, myself).
I would support this option being added, even if I never do end up using it.
Sean
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Precisely right.
Agree 10,000%
That’s why I suggested a larger font size - that’s generally the best accessibility modification in this situation.
Indeed - a change in font is what the original post requested.
Strikethrough on larger sizes is still visually cluttered, and may still not be suitable for some people.
The original request was for an option to remove the strikethrough or to “change that font” – @eMaX is the one who can confirm what “change” means there, but whether turning off strikethrough is used instead of or in conjunction with a change in font size should, I believe, be up to the user.
Sean
That is correct. With “change font” I literally meant to optionally remove the strikethrough, maybe add a different color if people need it.
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Just to make another point here. This is what I’m looking at multiple times a day. I ingest a bunch of emails, and the duplicate finder moves duplicates into the trash. Sometimes it is overly aggressive, so I need to go through it to identify important mails I’d rather have a duplicate of, than lose them.
Visually, DEVONthink is hurting my eyes. Yes, theoretically it is possible to read that, but it is like the worst viewing experience ever. So I end up grabbing all, moving them into a different folder (which is in itself bad as the combined trash folder then loses the database files were linked to), anyway, review them, then move back into trash.
It sounds like such an easy option to add a preference for the font used for trash. Why not just do it (I vaguely recall having asked for this since a couple of years, only to be turned down each time because of - well, IDK really why).
How do you ingest them? Afaik, DT uses the message ID of emails as is UUID and refuses to import the same message twice.
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I use a simple detour via a local IMAP server. So basically any of my mail accounts, be it some corporate Outlook, Google Mail, iCloud… From there I use a little hotkey in Apple Mail (recently updated to work with Golden Gate) which pushes those mails over into my local Mail Server that runs inside of a docker container.
DEVONthink then from there pulls the mails and makes up filenames based on subject lines (and has some strategy to avoid naming conflicts).
After the import, another script in DEVONthink applies all my filing rules to send the mails into their final folder structure.
So there are the steps:
- In Apple Mail, select Mails, hit Ctrl+A to archive - that pushes the files to local IMAP server
- In DEVONthink, hit “Import Mails” - that puts them into the inbox and deduplicates etc. Now I go via the inbox first as for some mails I have followup work, and I can mark them with HookMark app so that then I can maintain links to those mails e.g. in Todoist.
- In DEVONthink, hit “Archive Mails” - that files them away, executes delete rules etc.
It’s all open source:
Quite contrived. But does this process change or delete the original message id? Or does it save the emails in another format that hides the message id?
I’mnot arguing about the UI issue here. But a process that creates duplicates that DT usually avoids on its own might perhaps be modified. Thus preventing useless duplicates to be created.
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Well it basically just copies the original message out of the source system and pushes it into the local IMAP (dovecot). That also converts the message into .eml format, based on which the subsequent process works. So yes, it definitely breaks between the source to the final target - that is by design. It’s actually what I want - I do not want my mails to keep sitting, worst case, in some .PST files that can get damaged.
That is the one reason why I have that two-step process in DEVONthink: First Import, then if I want to place a marker on a given mail - like copy a hookmark link to it - I do it there, before the mail “disappears” into my archive structure.
This even works with DTTG (if only DTTG would work for me, which is a whole other story) - if I have a mail in DT, it appears in DTTG (again, that’s the idea, I’ve problems with it because probably I’ve way too many mails). Now let’s assume also I’ve a Todoist task. That Todoist task has the link to the mail.
On my phone, I am in Todoist, see the mail, tap on it, it opens it in DTTG.
Quite cool actually.
Now that email archiver I now use since probably 2020. I have 30 years worth of emails in DTP. I can search for any mail in under 1 second. This, for me, is the only reason I pay for DTP. I do not use it for anything else actually. YMMD, of course, but its search speed is amazing.
But because esp. user interface change requirements really go slow as hell into the DTP development, I’m in the process of replacing much of it. There was for example another use case I was using DTP for - OCR. DTP uses Abbyy behind the scenes, and that was quite useful, albeit very slow. That I have by now replaced by my own solution - https://caseleaf.app/ - which is much faster (and does many other things…)
So yes, in the near future I’ll have a replacement for the eMail archive which will no longer need DTP - for me anyway, I know that many other people use DTP for entirely different things, and are very happy with it. DTP is a cool piece of software, and I’m using it since way over 15 years.
My use for email archiving came out of two observations:
a) Apple Mail just crashed with millions of mails…, and don’t even talk about search and outlook in one phrase
b) I don’t want my business emails bound to the company I’m currently working for
HTH,
M
Oh and about the “useless duplicates” - that’s really the reason for my original post here. DTP is /really good/ at detecting duplicates. So it deduplicates really well. I even have a toolbar button for deduplicating further.
But sometimes it deduplicates “too well” - which is why I want to have a quick look at my trash - and that’s then where I hate those “strikethrough” font effects.
Why not increase the General > Appearance > View Text Size ?
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I like creative ideas. So yes, that is an option. But then I’d have to do/undo that constantly, because of course I don’t want to permanently change the size of all my fonts…
Meanwhile, this led me down the path of injecting my own hack (.dylib) - verdict: can’t be done cheaply. DT has some anti-tamper check. What I tried:
- Find a hidden preference key (found none)
- Swizzle dylib + load-command injection, ad-hoc resigned - Killed at startup - even a duplicate load of an already-linked Apple framework (no foreign code at all) triggers it
- DYLD_INSERT_LIBRARIES - Killed too, environment is scanned, the dylib itself loaded though
- Getting the abort message - none, not on stderr, not in crash logs, not in the unified log. Probably deliberately silent
So in some way kudos to the DTP team for hardening their app against code injection. Even though it sucks for me, good to see that.
What I then did was a way to grab all trash messages out and maintain their folder structure, into some deleted folder where they become normal objects (and where I can then run my de-duplicator on top). That works:
So there’s a solution for me now (and it immediately allowed me to find something I hadn’t wished to delete).
Anyway. I just wish (it’s Christmas soon, right)
- a user setting for the strikeout display (strike out or no difference or red blinking… up to the user)
- unrelated, a way to copy the current group’s column layout into someplace and apply it to another group (of e.g. another database)
I’m not sure I’m really following what you’re doing, so apologies if that’s the case (also I’m aware it’s not the point of your thread, but I’m always in favour of simplifying processes where possible!). It sounds like everything you’re doing in your complicated setup is something DT already does? I.e. copy your mailboxes in a couple of presses, de-dupe and then run rules. DT does all of that out of the box. I don’t really understand why you’d be running an additional IMAP server or Hookmark (items in DT have their own UUID, so even though Apple Mail is annoying and doesn’t make the UUID for individual emails visible, DT does). Lots of us run a DT database (or databases) for email, but usually we’re just doing it with the native solutions that DT offers. (A different setup may have been needed in the past, but that isn’t a reason to continue doing something a more complex way now, particularly if it’s causing additional overhead. Plus the more moving parts there are, the easier it is for something to break!).
I agree with your strikethrough request. I need a visual indicator, but a different colour would suit me fine.
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The reason I’m running an additional imap server is that this is the only way to cleanly extract mails out of any email system. Basically just drag and drop. From there, DT picks them up.
I know we now have a two-headed topic here, and I hate being offtopic, but…
Apple Mail can be a client for Google, Outlook and iCloud, IMAP, etc. – even AOL and Yahoo! and therefore be the gateway into DT…or am I missing something?
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